The fourth idiot

I have a request to all those who saw 3 Idiots and liked its social message, 'Keep a vacuum cleaner handy if there is a woman on the verge of delivery in the house':

Please spare a thought for Chatur.

Many years ago, when I was an active part of advertising (that is when I went out drinking with my colleagues on all week-nights), I had helped a colleague write a lecture aimed at students aspiring to drink on week-nights, sorry, to join advertising. While discussing the content of the lecture a theory had hit me smack in the middle of my forehead:

The 3-H Theory*

The theory helps a student find whether he or she is equipped to pursue a particular profession or not:

1. The first H stands for Heart. What does your heart want? For example, it took me twenty-three years to figure out that I had a heart. That done, it took me about twenty-three seconds to figure that I wanted to become a writer.

2. The second H stands for Head. What is your head capable of? That means your heart might want to become the next Einstein but if you need all your fingers and toes to count up to twenty, then you should probably have a head-to-heart talk and convince it to become something else, like a writer.

3. The third H stands for Hands. Are you willing to get your hands dirty? That is, once you have figured that your heart and head are in sync, you should be willing to work your butt off to succeed in the career you choose. In that sense, the third H also stands for Hard work. You can’t get anywhere without it. Sometimes, if the Head is not quite in place, Hands can get you where Heart wants to be. It’s rare, but not impossible.

Now to return to the blockbuster 3 Idiots, the movie urges you to follow your heart and not allow it to become a victim of the rules-norms-conventions of the System that considers only a handful of careers worthwhile. Brilliant subject and much needed in our society-country-culture and one that I completely agree with.

But let’s return to Chatur, the almost-villain of the movie and spare a thought for him. Yes, he does represent a blind adherence to the rules of the society. Yes, he does not have the brains to be brilliant and create path-breaking stuff in the career of his parents’-teachers’-society’s choice. Yes, he has been brain-washed and blinkered to follow the accepted path of success. True and sad.

But in real life, for every Rancho who is blessed enough to have Head, Heart and Hands working like an award-winning orchestra, there are millions of Chaturs, who, even if they were look into their Hearts, would find nothing, who do not have the necessary sharpness of Heads and hence may have no other option to use their Hands to achieve at least some amount of material success.

How many times have you come across people who say, “I hate what I am doing” but when you ask them what they would like to be doing instead, come up with, “I don’t know, something else!” And how many times you have muttered, “Loser!” in response to their predicament?

Think where Bill Gates would be if there were no worker ant Chaturs in the world to execute his ideas.

Think if dumb Chatur could have achieved even one per cent of the success he did if he had followed the nothingness in his heart or had accepted the handicap of his head.

Think about it.

*The 3-H Theory is the intellectual property of the author and scary legal things will be done to those try to reproduce with it in part or full.